Beware of the Gypsies : 11/09/06

I didn't read the Survival Guide for St Petersburg (of course) and drank water from my bathroom. Ooops - apparently I've now consumed kilos of heavy metal. I also caught the subway alone both to and from the Nevsky Prospect, anotherno-no, and inevitably hired a dodgy fake 'taxi' on my arrival. But unlike one of my unfortunate colleagues I haven't yet been mugged. She and her husband were 'swarmed' on the Metro, and EVERYTHING was taken from them including of course passports, airline tickets, money and the ability to get any more money.


I'm attributing my good fortune to the Llama, which I like to think lends its wearer a useful East European invisibility. When I did finally read the 'Survival guide' I noted these words: There are many GYPSIES, who prey on foreigners. As disadvantaged as they may seem, beware the impulse to help out. Keep a firm grip on your valuables, keep walking, and .. if you are surrounded by a group of them don't be shy about making a scene : shout, run, and generally attract attention while keeping track of your valuables. Equal opportunity and anti-discrimination laws are clearly not an issue in the Russian Legal system.


St Petersburg is huge, and once away from the beautiful canals and long French styled palaces, is populated by immense block like buildings of no architectural distinction. There's very little street lighting or signage on buildings and the effect is one of menace, as though every vast concrete facade shields waiting rooms of overcoated interrogators. On the street corners, even late at night, watermelon men sit in the gloom beside their caged fruit, I suppose on the sad off- chance of making one final sale. Most of St Petersburg is not stable enough for underground railways so has lengthy tram and bus routes. You see people clustering apparently at random, waiting in the wind and rain without any shelter for the next bus or tram. It isn't fully a 'car' city, in spite of the very wide boulevards. Instead everyone walks. And observed alongside the huge scale of the buildings the humans look very very small.


Our Hotel is right on the Gulf of Finland, with a beach front, and kite-flyers on its foreshore. This morning when I looked out of my 10th storey window long flocks of migrating birds were heading away. I suppose that's an indication of winter approaching. In both directions there are apartment blocks. Stalinist apartment buildings are better to live in we were told, and preferable to the Khrushchev 'shoe-box' as these have bedrooms only 6 metres by 6 metres.

Yesterday out on a walk I emerged beneath a building of quite alarming decrepitude, chunks of concrete had fallen from it and onto the ground and its doors and windows appeared to be rusting from their hinges. It was suggested that this particular building was 'communal' i.e. kitchens and bathrooms are shared. Basically no-one bothers with keeping anything in order. Numbers of young men were hanging around in the doorways as I trudged over the random tufts of grass. The whole place had the air of a refuse tip. I struggled against the wind to get back onto the esplanade where the Pribaltiyskaya gleamed with promises of fresh fruit for breakfast, BBC TV and bath-plugs:


Every minute has been filled for us, with papers to hear, followed by excursions and enormous dinners at night. Yesterday we went to Peterhof, today we were at the Hermitage, tomorrow we go to Novgorod. It's been fantastic. But the very best occasion altogether was on the night the conference began. We toured the canals on a barge-like restaurant, palaces on all sides, and as the night drew in drifted past immense naval vessels in silhouette. I didn't take photographs, but the whole occasion was quite magical, with an almost full moon and the water slightly choppy as we neared the gulf.